Items tagged with badware

For the past 3.5 years or so, NVIDIA has ardently advocated the GPU as a computational platform capable of solving almost any problem. One topic the company hasn't targeted, however, is the tremendous performance advantage the GPU could offer malware authors. The idea that a graphics card could double as a security hole isn't something we've heard before, but according to a paper by Giorgos Vasiliadis, Michalis Polychronakis and Sotiris Ionnidis, it's an attack vector whose popularity could boom in coming years. The trio argues that all the computational hardware that makes the GPU such an ideal...Read more...

A lot of users have called RealPlayer "badware," but mostly for performance reasons. All right, all right, we're being kind; there have been plenty of complaints over Real Networks' policies before.StopBadware.org said Tuesday it has labeled two versions of the RealPlayer media player as "badware," or spyware.RealPlayer 10.5, it claims, "fails to accurately and completely disclose the fact that it installs advertising software on the user's computer." And RealPlayer 11, it claims, "does not disclose the fact that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine software, and fails to remove this software...Read more...